Time to take a dive into the science from humanity's three asteroid sample return missions: Hayabusa, Hayabusa2, and OSIRIS-REx! 🪨🛰️🔭 Written for non-geophysicists (like me!), and those new to the field who don't yet ask to "pass the halite" at the dinner table 🧪, this is my review journal paper:

I genuinely think some people do not want to look this in the eye/think about it because it is so awful. We wrote what I thought was a pretty eye-opening story about all this and I was surprised by the lack of engagement tbh

I got to see Dragonfly in the APL cleanroom, and she’s beautiful! And BIG. No photos from the cleanroom, but here’s a full-scale test article in the lobby of Building 200 at APL. 😍

Best thing I’ve gotten to do this month was interview Expanse writers Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck about how speculative biology, the politics of academia and a Bible story all shaped their latest novel, The Faith of Beasts. Check it out! www.importantnotimportant.com/p/the-expans...

Wow, heck of a day to be a fan of #TheExpanse

Science Committee Democratic Staff Report Reveals Details on NASA’s Illegal Implementation of Trump’s FY2026 Budget Request Without Congressional Approval. democrats-science.house.gov/news/press-r...

Just FYI, nothing in this arXiv submission is real or true. This is completely misunderstanding the NISP instrument onboard #Euclid and then creating AI slop "results" based on that. arxiv.org/abs/2604.02726

Seems to be a busy day on Bluesky, so if I did a Kickstarter, like one of the following two topics.

The FY 2027 NASA budget request hides its science cuts by omitting mission names instead of explicitly zeroing them out. We did the work and found 54 missions cancelled in this proposal. This is another extinction-level event for NASA science. Full list: planetary.org/save-nasa-science

Hello, I made you a feed of your cats watching the Artemis II splashdown bsky.app/profile/did:...

Ramona has become a big space fan. Welcome home, Artemis II. What an incredible quest.

The Lunar flyby happens today. Follow @barbylon.bsky.social for an insider view from the #ArtemisII Lunar Science Team! 🧪🔭🌘🚀

Errrr, I seem to be having a problem with a couple of my Easter eggs…

It’s 03:30 for me, so how about a review of the sleep config of the Orion cabin? This is a fairly straightforward config & the crew has some flexibility for how they want to arrange things. Typically crew sleep is a cameras off period, but I’m sure they’ll give folks a peek at some point.

“Vice President JD Vance thinks aliens are visiting earth and that they are Demons” is the most “I wish Carl Sagan were alive” moment I’ve had in a while.

I am apparently locked out of my main bsky account @bowlerhatscience.org (permanently?), so I've made this alt. I can prove it's me but I really don't wanna *have* to do it.

Delighted to see our WISPIT team announce the second directly imaged exoplanet from the WISPIT 2 system! Led by Chloe Lawlor (Galway) with Richelle van Capelleveen (Leiden), we also have a spectrum of the inner, more massive planet, showing carbon monoxide features. ☄ #exoplanet #astrodon

When you offer charitable services or give to a cause, you don't usually have strings attached. It's done out of kindness and concern. I guess someone with more money than some nations (and complains that money hasn't made him happy) has yet to figure that out.

Have to thank @beamjockey.bsky.social for reposting this and putting this on my radar. This year's LPSC seems like it's the proverbial "canary in a coal mine" for the state of Planetary Science here in the US. This SHOULD be a very vibrant time, but instead it seems moribund.

So, what do you think of Project Hail Mary?

Hubble unexpectedly catches comet breaking up ☄️ Comet K1 fragmented into at least four pieces while the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope was watching. The odds of that happening while Hubble viewed the comet are extraordinarily miniscule! 🔗 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... @science.esa.int @stsci.edu

none of our trail or process cameras captured the meteor this morning but Nicole did offer this artist rendering.

Latest press release illustrated by yours truly

Nancy Grace Roman telescope is back from the vibe test. Shaken but not stirred!

From March 9th to March 13th, Pisa will be home to the global gravitational waves community! EGO and Virgo will host the @ligo.org - Virgo - KAGRA Collaboration Meeting, the biannual meeting of the gravitational wave community, for the first time in Italy after more than a decade.

This is lovely and affirms something I say all the time: Stories matter. Even kinda silly ones you watched as a kid (I have a long list of those, ones I still fondly rewatch sometimes). They show us what to emulate, what to fight against, how to better ourselves, how to see through others' eyes.

This should be getting better as we leave solar maximum. Here's an update of HST altitude vs. sunspot number.

Really useful to see data on what a lot of us have felt. Algorithmic feeds are drugs that are not good for us.

👀 Did you know that ESA has Bluesky accounts in multiple languages? 🇩🇪 @de.esa.int — German 🇫🇷 @fr.esa.int — French 🇮🇹 @ita.esa.int — Italian 🇪🇸 @es.esa.int — Spanish 🇳🇱 @nl.esa.int — Dutch If you’re looking for updates and events closer to home, make sure to follow your local ESA page!

If only Boeing engineers put as much effort into materials comparability and O-ring sizing as I had to put into figuring out all the interesting redactions youtu.be/L96asfTvJ_A

This unofficial patch for the NEO Surveyor project that my husband brought home from work is sending me.

spacefromspace.com/declassified... is now home to over 700 georeferenced spy satellite images of locations all over the world taken between 1960 and 1984! I've also published a new, very experimental, map view search method for all images available on the website: spacefromspace.com/declassified...

When the LD went around the horn and did her GO/NOGO poll to enter Term Count (T-10m), and got a GO, we got a little excited in the sim room, because when we restarted the countdown clock and came out of the hold, we knew we’d be passing through the events that stopped us during the first WDR.

Today, NASA will release an investigative report on the 2024 botched crew test flight of Boeing's Starliner, where the agency will declare the mission to be a Type A mishap -- the most severe category it can assign www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

At our f2f meeting today we decided to delete our dormant Twitter/X account, following the excellent example of @ec-euclid.bsky.social. 🧪🔭

My historical NASA budget dataset has a new home on The Planetary Society's website, and is now updated with all final FY 2026 details. New per-sheet CSV/XLSX download options as well! Check it out at: www.planetary.org/space-policy...

My new topographic map of Venus is now online. Full resolution image version (~370Mpix) is available on Flickr www.flickr.com/photos/10958... PDF version (~211MB) is available here: drive.google.com/file/d/1Ksf1... 🧵 1/5

And yet, every day, our most prominent Democratic politicians, scholars, public intellectuals, universities & university leaders, & other civil society organizations continue to use his platform as their primary social media outlet. One cannot help but notice this & draw conclusions.

China's Xinhua news agency has just published this editorial cartoon in response to Trump's rejection of climate policies. It is pretty clear that China views this as a HUGE geopolitical fumble by the US leaving the field clear for China's to win the global race to clean-tech hegemony

Today is the 36th anniversary of the pale blue dot picture. Yesterday we did a journal club about a classic Sagan paper and my grad student BP ended by sharing this video. I’d heard the more polished pale blue dot speech so many times but I find this one to be more human youtu.be/tgQ1PtkZvGU?...

"Oversubsidized" is the best description of Musk I've ever heard.

Please enjoy our research paper on how Bluesky is the preferred home of academics of all stripes, including professors of rare moths. (Yes, we actually have lots of entomologists here). academic.oup.com/icb/article-... 🧪

Hegseth's unconstitutional retaliation against Sen. Kelly was so brazen that an exasperated federal judge used more than a dozen exclamation points! Highlights from the ruling: "Horsefeathers!" and "Please!" "That is a troubling development in a free country!" buff.ly/YY60KWM

#Politics #Trump Breaking from @nbcnews.com: DC federal judge block #DOD secretary Pete Hegseth from punishing or demoting Senator Mark Kelly, says Kelly has 1st amendment rights. www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...

Three things you’ll be able to do after our MOOC: 1️⃣ Undertand what climate data are and how they are produced 2️⃣ Pick the right type of climate data for your sector 3️⃣ Find and interpret trusted #C3S data with confidence @ecmwf.int @w-u-r.bsky.social ⬇️

PUT IT ON YOUR CALENDAR! We're busily assembling an international #Expanse meetup at #FanExpoCanada for August 2026. Panels, parties, a location tour and at least one stop at that dive bar Wes was always talking about! fanexpohq.com/fanexpocanada/

Okay, another thing: If the ocean is not your thing, but outer space is... We've launched a new column for space policy, too! The great @dagomardegroot.bsky.social is at the helm for that one: HORIZONS OF HUMANITY. sciencepolitics.org/2026/01/13/h...

Almost all of the scientists were previously at US institutions go.nature.com/4qMlrUR

Meanwhile, some launch time ESA archive digging brings out interesting pictures, like this one during Ariane 1 L3 launch campaign, CCU-1 with the payload stack going towards the ELA-1 launch pad at CSG, and the obligatory Renault 4 driving in the convoy :)

SpaceX shifts focus from something that it will never do on Mars to something it will never do on the Moon.